Touch Kobo Touch future firmware feature request thread

[BensonBear]

Originally Posted by janpeeters

The reason that I wanted to be able to organize was that with big libraries it takes a lot of time to find a book (e.g. if you don't recall the title or author search is useless). So knowing that it was about psychology or natural science makes it easier to retrieve.

I asked this because there are two broad sorts of reason one would want to "organize". One, to find individual things easily, and two, so that the organize relates things together in a way that they might be used together. If you only need the first of these, it is not so difficult to do. But then a good search command may often be better than "shelves". Each would serve a purpose, but that specific purpose of finding a book is only one reason for wanting to, as you say "organize organize organize".

Apps like GoodReader on Apple iOS have the possibility to reflow the text. This means that the text get's ripped out of the PDF and redrawn so that you're not stuck with small characters on long lines or have to scroll through a line of text to read the PDF. It starts behaving like a normal ebook, where you can change typesize, lineheight etc.

I have not seen that one, but with most attempts at "pdf reflow" you are left with things "flowed" together that should not be. Do you think that if for the pdfs you want to read, you slip into landscape mode, and zoom to the max without requiring panning (to take off the side margins), you would get good enough pdf rendering without the two problems you mention? I think that is good enough for most typical books and is quite easy to do.

I read your reply on reflow. Of course you can do this with Calibre, and it's probably the best way to go, but especially when you have to do a lot of PDF (or Word-doc) reading for your work it's most convenient if you could just hook up your Kobo reader, drag the PDFs on the disk, disconnect hop on a train and start reading. So a simple implementation would be nice.

I think the above suggestion would be good enough, but if not, the reason I mentioned third party conversion is that you will be somewhat able to tune that the way you want, but if Kobo does reflow you probably won't. Given there is no objective definition of what pdf reflow is, its good to have lots of options out there for it.

[janpeeters]

Hi BensonBear,

…and two, so that the organize relates things together in a way that they might be used together.

Can you explain what you mean by this? When would this be handy?

I have not seen that one, but with most attempts at "pdf reflow" you are left with things "flowed" together that should not be. Do you think that if for the pdfs you want to read, you slip into landscape mode, and zoom to the max without requiring panning (to take off the side margins), you would get good enough pdf rendering without the two problems you mention? I think that is good enough for most typical books and is quite easy to do.

I agree PDF reflow is not yet really refined. There might be 'tags/codes' in PDFs that could be read for a better conversion but I don't know if that's the case.
The problems with the zooming is that when you've zoomed, turning the page is a hassle because you have to slide to the edge, press next page and position the page again. With reflow (as rough as it is) it just works like you're used to with an ebook and for most PDFs (not books per se) it is okay enough. I would user PDF and MOBI for books and PDF for documents.

Of course you could also open up the Kobo Books app as a cataloging tool like Calibre with conversion of PDFs included. It's now still two separate programs which could be more user friendly. To use the metaphor of iTunes again. It has a store, plays DRM protected MPEG4's and MP3s but is also capable of playing songs that are bought elsewhere. And it can also convert ALAC (sort of FLAC by Apple) to MP3.

Thanks for your time, best regards,

Jan

[danskmacabre]

Now I have bookshelves, I really don't need any more features... Just get the firmware nice and stable please and support large capacity SD cards properly like it's meant to.
Also get fix the page turning speed like it was in 1.9.17..

Thanks.

[taming]

I have 32 GB SD card in mine--some work better than others, it seems.

[TongueTied]

My request for future firmware updates: More testing please

[danskmacabre]

Originally Posted by taming

I have 32 GB SD card in mine--some work better than others, it seems.

Apparently so yeah... Oh well.

[BensonBear]

Originally Posted by janpeeters

Can you explain what you mean by this? When would this be handy?

Say for example you are reading about a specific problem, that many books address. You want to group the books so that when you are on one, it is easy to get to the other ones as well, and also to the particular sections where they discuss the same topics or even refer to one another. So the point of the organization here is not just to find one book you can't remember the title of, but to keep books together that must be used together. And in fact it should keep related bookmarks together. There is no reason in modern times to have bookmarks stuck with the particular books! That is a mere limitation of the physical nature of books. Ironically, when these devices talk about "bookshelves" they are sticking with the same physically constraining metaphor. (Although apparently you can put books on more than one shelf, so the metaphor, thank goodness, is not accurate in that respect).

I agree PDF reflow is not yet really refined. There might be 'tags/codes' in PDFs that could be read for a better conversion but I don't know if that's the case.

Generally, it is not at all the case. PDF is not meant to be reflowed or anything like that, it was originally meant just as a way to define documents that would be printed out. This is a central aspect of the problem. I believe it would not be too hard to alter some of the pdf to html programs to intelligently guess at headers, footers, footnotes especially with a small amount of human guidance. It would use global page heuristics such as noticing when the font changes on the page, how long it stays changed, and the like, and guess what parts of the text can be diverted to footnotes or removed entirely.

The problems with the zooming is that when you've zoomed, turning the page is a hassle because you have to slide to the edge, press next page and position the page again.

Right, I guess you didn't see my many previous tedious postings on this. Makes pdf reading awful on the Kobo as it is. However, as I said, if you go to landscape, and zoom to the maximum you can, such that you see the entire page, and just give up the margins, do you think that is large enough text to read? I find with most books it easily is.
So pdf could be done without reflow on the kobo, with ease. In fact I have written some code that proves this to my satisfaction, at least.

[John F]

Please include more testing for side-loaded epubs. Don't treat side-loaded epubs as second class citizens.

Please make it possible/easier to rollback to previous versions of firmware.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

Now I have bookshelves, I really don't need any more features... Just get the firmware nice and stable please and support large capacity SD cards properly like it's meant to.
Also get fix the page turning speed like it was in 1.9.17..

Thanks.

To which I would add being able to read ePubs whether Kobo or sideloaded in landscape.

It would then have all what I consider to be the basic ereader features.

It would have been better if these basics had been solid from the beginning instead of including fripperies like the reading awards. There was plenty of time to develop and roll the fripperies after the Kobo Touch launch.

[Xennex1170]

Originally Posted by taming

I have 32 GB SD card in mine--some work better than others, it seems.

Just curious, how many books are on your 32GB SD card? and can you see all your bookcovers? I've only got a 8GB stuck in mine and I haven't filled up even a fifth of it and I'm running into the blank bookcover wall.. Yes, I've deleted all the unnecessary N3 files from .kobo/images. :P

[toertchn]

I want to suggest another page turning setting like attached image. It came from my pocketbook but is realy comfortable if you hold the reader sometimes by left or right hand.

[original-occam]

Now that we have shelves, I would like to put books on shelves from the "books" screen. It seems that there is a ready made mechanism for this - the 'heart' which is used for the shelf "Shortlist" only now.
Let a click on the heart bring up a list of available shelves, with selection boxes for them. Any shelves already selected for the book should be marked (ticked?).
The default selection should be "Shortlist", and if the user has not created any more shelves, the current icon would work exactly the same in the new version.

[janpeeters]

Originally Posted by BensonBear

Say for example you are reading about a specific problem, that many books address. You want to group the books so that when you are on one, it is easy to get to the other ones as well, and also to the particular sections where they discuss the same topics or even refer to one another. So the point of the organization here is not just to find one book you can't remember the title of, but to keep books together that must be used together. And in fact it should keep related bookmarks together. There is no reason in modern times to have bookmarks stuck with the particular books! That is a mere limitation of the physical nature of books. Ironically, when these devices talk about "bookshelves" they are sticking with the same physically constraining metaphor. (Although apparently you can put books on more than one shelf, so the metaphor, thank goodness, is not accurate in that respect).

I didn't think of this but you're right. Why should related bookmarks be restricted to one book only. Innovative thinking.

Generally, it is not at all the case. PDF is not meant to be reflowed or anything like that, it was originally meant just as a way to define documents that would be printed out. This is a central aspect of the problem. I believe it would not be too hard to alter some of the pdf to html programs to intelligently guess at headers, footers, footnotes especially with a small amount of human guidance. It would use global page heuristics such as noticing when the font changes on the page, how long it stays changed, and the like, and guess what parts of the text can be diverted to footnotes or removed entirely.

I agree that PDF was not ment to be reflowed, but if I was Adobe (as being the major player in PDF reading and creation software) I would quickly rethink that position. The web is becoming more and more format independent (responsive layout) PDF could become responsive also. Maybe even more smart then reflowing because it is taken into account during the the design process.

Right, I guess you didn't see my many previous tedious postings on this. Makes pdf reading awful on the Kobo as it is.

No sorry I didn't.

However, as I said, if you go to landscape, and zoom to the maximum you can, such that you see the entire page, and just give up the margins, do you think that is large enough text to read? I find with most books it easily is.
So pdf could be done without reflow on the kobo, with ease. In fact I have written some code that proves this to my satisfaction, at least.

Some PDFs would do alright but I have many that I would love to read with a bigger font. As I haven't read your previous posts on this have you created something that can delete the margins? Because if not you would still be stuck with the sliding to the right before you could turn the page. Which is tedious. I going to search for your posts ;-)

Best, Jan

[BensonBear]

Originally Posted by janpeeters

I agree that PDF was not ment to be reflowed, but if I was Adobe (as being the major player in PDF reading and creation software) I would quickly rethink that position. The web is becoming more and more format independent (responsive layout) PDF could become responsive also. Maybe even more smart then reflowing because it is taken into account during the the design process.

Yes, but that *is* epub or something like it, really, not pdf anymore. And the main point is that this would not work retroactively for all the pdfs we already have, which is a lot.

As I haven't read your previous posts on this have you created something that can delete the margins? Because if not you would still be stuck with the sliding to the right before you could turn the page. Which is tedious.

I wrote an experimental replacement pdf plugin that finds the margins by looking at the pixels of the rendered page, then rerenders with a zoom to get rid of them and make the font as big as possible, consistent with using a simple tap to go forward and back. This code cannot pan at all even if you want to, so it is only good for some pdfs. For some books, this even ends up with too big a font! But in some cases, it is a little too small as well.

[robko]

Originally Posted by janpeeters

I agree that PDF was not ment to be reflowed, but if I was Adobe (as being the major player in PDF reading and creation software) I would quickly rethink that position.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but PDF format is working the way it's supposed to work -- i.e. display a page the way it was designed to be displayed/printed. I use pdf for price lists/technical info etc that I send out in large part because whatever computer/printer combo the recipient has will print it out "properly". In this case by "properly" I mean that if it was a 1 pager, it will still be a one pager rather than ending up on 2 page, and if a particular line is 1 line long, it won't run over and end up with part on the next line. If I didn't care about that I could leave it in Word or Excel format, but when I put it in pdf I know are going to get what they should when they are printing, rather than them having to play around with the formatting to get it to work right on their setup. It's a very good TOOL for what it does. It's not the proper tool if you want make to something that reflows. I doubt Adobe will change pdf very much for this reason.
My 2 cents worth.